Until the recession hit, Shawn Bakker didn't have to worry about drumming up construction business.

"I'd just go from one job to to next. ... I'd never had a sign on the truck," said Bakker, 31, who moved to Salinas three years ago from his native Colorado.

But construction worked suddenly dried up in 2008, and when 2009 hit, Bakker went "four or five months without anything." He said he realized that "I want to stop reacting to the economy. I want to be proactive."

Now, Bakker is doing well at a time when building is still slow. His company - there's a Bakker Construction sign on the pickup now - is focusing on remodeling. More than half of his business is remodeling foreclosed properties, and he has three full-time employees.

He's telling clients about a Federal Housing Administration program that Bakker didn't know about before getting into remodeling. It's a 203K loan, in which the cost of remodeling can be included in a 3.5 percent FHA loan.